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  • The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume Four: The Irish Book in English, 1800–1891 edited by James H. Murphy
  • Heather Laird (bio)
The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume Four: The Irish Book in English, 1800–1891, edited by James H. Murphy; pp. xx + 732. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, £90.00, $175.00.

This is the fourth volume of a five-part series on the history of the Irish book from its beginnings to the close of the twentieth century. The time period dealt with in this volume, from 1800 to 1891, begins with the passing of the legislation that brought about the Act of Union and ends with the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. Two seminal [End Page 570] historical events, therefore, form the temporal parameters of this collection, pointing to what its editor, James H. Murphy, refers to as the “significant link” that existed “between the political history of the period in Ireland and the history of the Irish book” (2). This connection, as is indicated in a number of essays contained in the volume, is most apparent when considering the ramifications on publishing in Ireland of the new Copyright Act that accompanied the Act of Union. In short, Ireland, which lost much of its legal autonomy under the union, came under British copyright legislation on 2 July 1801. This brought an end to the country’s lucrative reprint trade. As a result, many small printers and booksellers went out of business, some finding work outside of Ireland, and trade was consolidated around a smaller number of larger publishers. Economic and social historical factors are also relevant when considering the Irish book from 1800 to 1891. New technologies and modes of transport brought about transformations in book production and distribution, while a significant increase in literacy rates expanded readership and altered reading practices. Much of the history of the nineteenth-century Irish book, as explored in this volume, is an examination of the various repercussions of, and responses to, these changing circumstances.

The collection, which is comprised of eleven sections, is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary with a focus on the material history of the book. While not specified in the table of contents, the volume could be divided into two main parts. Murphy points out in his introduction that “almost half of its fifty-one chapters address issues of book production, publishing and publishers, literacy and readership, including gender and readership, the role of periodicals and pamphlets, and issues relating to distribution, reading spaces, libraries, and collections” (5). These chapters, which form the first five sections of the volume, include geographically focused accounts of publishing, overviews of key Irish publishers, descriptions of the preferred texts and reading practices of the rural poor, and surveys of the various spaces designated for reading. Collectively, therefore, sections I to V trace the journey of the book from production to consumption. The remaining twenty-eight chapters are concerned with different strands of publishing: religion, literature, antiquarianism, children’s books, the sciences, and the performing arts. Some of these chapters, such as Claire Connolly’s discussion of the national tale from 1800 to 1830, are overviews, while others, such as Juliana Adelman’s “The Industrial Resources of Ireland by Robert Kane,” have a narrower focus. The volume also contains an extensive bibliography.

The main strength of this volume is its striking range and inclusiveness. If you want to find information on anything from bookbinding, to chapmen, to repeal reading rooms, then this is the place to look. A volume as comprehensive and detailed as this will almost certainly attract a broad readership, including historians, literary critics, geographers, and those trained in the history of the book as a discipline in its own right. Inevitably a collection designed to appeal to such a diverse readership will contain sections that are of more interest to some readers than others. As a literary scholar, I particularly enjoyed section VII on “Literature and Literary Careers.” While acknowledging, however, that my academic training has undoubtedly shaped my response to the various themes and topics covered in the volume, I would contend that seventy pages specifically devoted to literature in...

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